Colorism and Historical Fiction

I watched all of Netflix's Self-Made and then the movie The Sapphires. Both of these are "inspired by" true stories of black women.

Self-Made stars Octavia Spencer as Madam C. J. Walker, originally born as Sarah Breedlove. Sometimes there are fantasy sequences as she imagines building her business empire up. The first episode especially frames her competition with Addie Munroe as a boxing match like Jack Johnson and his match with "the great white hope" often mentioned by the characters. I liked the lesbian storyline with her daughter Leila, and also her lawyer/business partner Freeman Ransom. The miniseries touches on important issues of racism, feminism, sexism, respectability politics, and lynching. Colorism is also frequently touched on with Addie Munroe as a "high yellow" black woman, but there is also a light-skinned Dora who betrays Sarah with her husband and her business rival. When Sarah's husband starts talking about a black "Walker Girl" to compete with the Gibson Girl ideal, Sarah starts to feel jealous and threatened, as if she's being compared to a thin, light-skinned ideal.

Addie Munroe is made to be such a prominent villain in the story that I was disappointed afterward to read that she was a heavy fictionalization of the real life Annie Malone. Annie Turnbo Malone was not half-white, and she actually employed Sarah as a sales agent, so the depiction of Addie Munroe laughing and sneering at the idea of hiring Sarah is a big lie. That's why they changed Annie's name, because they changed her character so much from real life. I do see why they wanted to touch on colorism between light-skinned and dark-skinned black women, but surely they could have done that with just the Dora character and other fictional characters?

Meanwhile The Sapphires concerns four Australian Aboriginal women who sang in Vietnam for US troops, and it too touches on colorism. For many years, the Australian government had a racist policy to remove light-skinned Aborigines from their families, and give them to white boarding schools and white families to raise them white. (Very similar to what the US did to Native Americans.) One of the characters in the film is part of these Stolen Generations, though she remembers how she used to sing with her darker cousins as a child. When two of her cousins come invite her to sing with them again, Kay is at first hesitant, but later sneaks away from her current white friends and jumps wholeheartedly into singing with them. Yet she still fights with mamabear Gail, who calls her a "coconut" confused and ashamed about her race. Gail even slaps her for dating a black American soldier, and I keep thinking, "Why? It's not Kay's fault that she was stolen from home, and you're the one who invited her to join you guys on the singing tour." Kay sincerely is trying to reconnect with her Aboriginal identity. She makes a point of telling Robby, "I'm black. I'm just pale black." Anyway, the movie is fairly enjoyable, with great songs and romance. It also touches on racism among the American soldiers against the Vietnamese as well as against the black soldiers.

However, just like Self-Made, this is historical fiction. The white character Dave is complete fiction, and the fact that he as the manager tells the girls to switch from country-western to soul music is rather insulting. In real life, The Sapphires had been touring in Australia for some time, and they switched to soul music after meeting a New Zealand Maori band. No white assistance needed. Plus, in real life, only two sisters toured Vietnam, because the other sisters stayed behind in protest of the Vietnam War. I mean, the movie was co-written by one of the Sapphire's sons, but I wish he had tried to be as faithful to real life as The African Doctor was. Why let Hollywood fuck up the important details so much?